Al-Wajiza fi l-rijal (book)

Al-Wajīza fī l-rijāl (Arabic: الوَجیزة فی الرِجال, literally: a concise work on rijal) is an Arabic book concerning rijal written by Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi. This short essay concerns the biographies of figures and transmitters of hadiths.

Contents

The Author

The author of this book is al-'Allama al-Majlisi or the Second Majlisi (1037/1628-1110/1699). He is one of the best-known scholars, jurist and muhaddiths in the Islamic world. He was an influential Shiite official in the Safavid era, and the author of the book of hadiths, Bihar al-anwar.

Contents and Style of Writing

After a short introduction, the author concerns himself with mentioning the names, titles, and kunyas of the transmitters of hadiths in an alphabetic order. He specifies their reliability or unreliability with abbreviations, such as "ثقة" (thiqa, literally: reliable) which refers to being Imami, righteous, and careful; "ح" ('ḥ') which refers to being praised, "صح" ('ṣ.ḥ.') which refers to being accurate; "ض" ('ḍ') which refers to being unreliable, and "م" ('m') which refers to being unknown.

In this essay, the author believes that the masters of permission are reliable. "Masters of permission" (mashayikh al-ijaza) refers to people who issue permissions for the transmission of their or other people's hadiths and books to others. The first person who implied the belief in this thesis was al-Shahid al-Thani (d. 965/1559), though the terminology was first used by Muhammad Taqi al-Majlisi (d. 1070/1660) in his book, Rawdat al-muttaqin. Another principle maintained by the author is his reliance on certifications by al-'Allama al-Hilli and other recent scholars such as al-Shahid al-Thani to the effect that a transmitter of hadiths was reliable. Another evidence for reliability of a transmitter of hadiths to which the author appealed was the transmitter's being in a chain of transmission which is believed to be accurate by prominent scholars of hadiths.

Sources

In writing the essay, al-'Allama al-Majlisi relied on previous sources such as: